Sunday, December 30, 2007

In my experience of teaching in northern hemisphere schools, the Christmas break can be very short and come at the end of a really long term...

When you are teaching overseas at an international school you'll often find that you get an extended Christmas break, even if you live in a non-Christian country. This is because the school community (that is, the paying clients) demand it.

I'm feeling very relaxed and I'm only halfway through my three-week winter (Christmas) break. I'm currently in Laos, where I've spent some time learning to weave.

Christmas breaks long enough to go home and visit your family may be a priority for you and if it is then you need to add a question about it to your interview list prior to the job fairs. If you end up looking at a school that is predominantly made up of a non-Christian local client base, you may not receive a long Christmas break, and may even end up having to work on December 25th!

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

With the Fulbright Teacher Exchange program you can trade places with a teacher in another country for anywhere from 6 weeks to 12 months.

Exchanging you job with another international teacher is a lot less complicated than taking on a contract at an international school for 1-2 years because you don't have to quit your job, you don't have to sell your house while being able to indulge yourself in an international teaching experience in a safe and controlled way to see if the lifestyle is for you...

Fulbright grants allow you to take your US salary with you wherever you go (so you could well end up saving money while you are teaching overseas!) and will pay all your relocation costs.

The Fulbright program is the brainchild of J. William Fulbright who envisioned the exchange program as a cultural and educational exchange vehicle.

The limits to the Fulbright program are that you have to be a US teacher who exchanges with a non-US teacher in another country, or a non-US teacher who will exchange with a US teacher and take over their teaching position for the agreed upon period of time.

So, while not being a 'worldwide' program, the Fulbright exchange of teachers allows American teachers to travel and explore the world while allowing non-American teachers to get a taste of the US education system - which could lead to a better chance of securing a teaching job at an American International School!

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

If you're looking for a teaching job overseas then you've probably checked out the international teaching job fair organisers...

There are a number of international teacher recruitment fairs held around the globe, but they may not be convenient to you, so you may have decided not to sign up with any of them.

This is a mistake!

Many international schools looking to employ overseas teachers list their jobs with these job fair organisers - and registering with them means you get access to these listings in a searchable database!

With the various ways technology allows you to communicate remotely with potential employers around the world, you are cutting your own throat if you do not register with one of these organisations.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

You will need to be prepared with a mechanism to quickly and easily turn down interview requests because the chances are you will be invited to interview with schools that you have no interest in teaching for.

One way to prepare for this contingency is to prepare ‘thanks but no thanks’ notes ahead of the job fair. You can then fill in the blanks on the refusal letter and either pass it on to the recruiters at the sign up session on the first morning of the fair, put it in the recruiter’s mailbox, or slip it under the door of their hotel room.

When you are preparing your application packs to take with you to the teaching job fair you simply prepare and print some copies of your refusal letter and take them with you to the fair.

A major problem with this plan occurs if you have not prepared enough of the notes, as my colleague experienced when she received interview invitations from 26 schools, of which she was only interested in two! What do you do then? You will have to resort to hand-written notes.

Another option is to take along a pad of Post-It notes. Post-It notes can be stuck to hotel room doors or on to the recruiter’s table at the sign-up session. A bonus to using this method is that your note will not be accidentally mixed in among other papers because it is both sticky and colourful.

Before you turn down interview requests you need to consider how much practice you have had recently with job interviews. Do you feel confident? Going to job interviews with schools you are not very interested in teaching for will give you an opportunity to practise rusty interview technique in preparation for the schools you really are interested in. Additionally, through interviewing with these recruiters you may discover that an international school you were not very interested in is actually the perfect place for you to move to.

Friday, December 14, 2007

You will be surprised at the number of teaching job interviews you will be invited to attend at an international recruitment job fair. You may be worried because you have sent out your resume to all the recruiters on the job fair organizer’s list of schools that have vacancies in your teaching area and yet you have received no responses, or only automated responses.

Trust me, this is not a problem!

You will find that when you arrive for the orientation session and check your mailbox that you have received a number of interview invitations from those very same recruiters that have not sent you a personal response to your initial attempts to make contact.

One colleague of mine said she received interview invitations from 26 schools at the last job fair she attended. Another reported that she’d spent hours sending out her resume to different international school recruiters and received a very disappointing response pre-job fair; however she also received an astounding number of interview requests at the job fair.